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qatsiBook Review: The Phoney Victory - The World War II Illusion, by Peter Hitchens
If I had to choose one of the Hitchen brothers, it would not be Peter, but I found the title and the premise of this book interesting enough to find out what he had to say, especially coming from someone on the right of the political spectrum.
There were one or two claims that were at best dubious and unsubstantiated - the idea that Chamberlain and Halifax wanted a war in 1939 struck me as quite peculiar (though the fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact threw everyone's calculations aside is clear), and there is a later, perhaps predictable, tirade about abortion and social degeneracy all being a consequence of the war - but most of the book rings true enough: the shaky guarantee to Poland, hardly a liberal democracy; the disinterest and even hostility of the United States; Dunkirk and the fire-bombing of German cities; and the forced movement of peoples at the end of the war. So Hitchens deconstructs the notions that Britain went to war to save the Jews, that it forged the "Special Relationship" with the US, that all the actions were heroic and just. Hitchens goes to some length to clarify (repeatedly, and perhaps too much) that he is not arguing against the war or in any way in favour of the Third Reich - though he questions the choice of Poland as a tipping point, and makes no convincing arguments for an alternative.
In the early chapters, Hitchens points out that Britain somewhat sat out two thirds of the European war; he does not, of course, go quite as far as to give credit to the Red Army. I did learn some things from the book - such as that Britain defaulted on its World War I debts to the United States and that radar nearly didn't get built. Oddly, Hitchens seems to think the Dam Busters raid was one of the more successful acts of Bomber Command; whilst it's a great legend of derring-do, the consensus is that its military effect was slim.
As the New Statesman points out, anyone who has taken an interest in history will have discovered and understood these things; but its review rather simplistically overlooks the inconvenient fact that large swathes of the population appear not to have understood these things, if one is to judge from contemporary British popular culture. Yet Hitchens is also reluctant to do more than scratch the surface on this; he could and should have asked more probing questions of why our popular view of this period is the way it is. He isn't afraid to take chunks out of Churchill; why not the Gammonati and readers of the Daily Mail?
The blurb talks about the myth of the "Good War" being used to justify more recent conflicts that have had such dismal results, but this is another point that doesn't actually get any serious discussion, which is a shame. Curiously, I take a different interpretation: that mass media and our collective squeamishness prevents military action on a scale taken to defeat Germany in 1945. This is no bad thing, but the successful resurrection of Germany and Europe - rapidly in the West, eventually in the East - surely arises at least in part from such total defeat, forced to start again from a tabula rasa. For example, the West encouraged uprisings in Iraq in 1991, but chose not to give them enough support to ensure overthrow of the regime - until the US returned to the subject a decade later and a world apart. And then, suffering a crisis of confidence, it proffered the same half-hearted support in the Arab Spring of 2011 and onward. The level of military involvement, its purpose and objectives, is a fair question for discussion, but the disproportionate popular expectation for outcomes is a constant and problematic. Ultimately one is left obliquely to infer that Hitchens' objections are largely faith-based - a position he is entitled to take, but would be better if he made it clear.
Clearly, this book was a thought-provoking read, and therefore a good thing, but it's a bit like the reveal in Murder on the Orient Express: like Poirot, Hitchens discusses the things he feels are important, but there is a sense that the simpler, more comforting, yet false explanation will prevail.
If I had to choose one of the Hitchen brothers, it would not be Peter, but I found the title and the premise of this book interesting enough to find out what he had to say, especially coming from someone on the right of the political spectrum.
There were one or two claims that were at best dubious and unsubstantiated - the idea that Chamberlain and Halifax wanted a war in 1939 struck me as quite peculiar (though the fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact threw everyone's calculations aside is clear), and there is a later, perhaps predictable, tirade about abortion and social degeneracy all being a consequence of the war - but most of the book rings true enough: the shaky guarantee to Poland, hardly a liberal democracy; the disinterest and even hostility of the United States; Dunkirk and the fire-bombing of German cities; and the forced movement of peoples at the end of the war. So Hitchens deconstructs the notions that Britain went to war to save the Jews, that it forged the "Special Relationship" with the US, that all the actions were heroic and just. Hitchens goes to some length to clarify (repeatedly, and perhaps too much) that he is not arguing against the war or in any way in favour of the Third Reich - though he questions the choice of Poland as a tipping point, and makes no convincing arguments for an alternative.
In the early chapters, Hitchens points out that Britain somewhat sat out two thirds of the European war; he does not, of course, go quite as far as to give credit to the Red Army. I did learn some things from the book - such as that Britain defaulted on its World War I debts to the United States and that radar nearly didn't get built. Oddly, Hitchens seems to think the Dam Busters raid was one of the more successful acts of Bomber Command; whilst it's a great legend of derring-do, the consensus is that its military effect was slim.
As the New Statesman points out, anyone who has taken an interest in history will have discovered and understood these things; but its review rather simplistically overlooks the inconvenient fact that large swathes of the population appear not to have understood these things, if one is to judge from contemporary British popular culture. Yet Hitchens is also reluctant to do more than scratch the surface on this; he could and should have asked more probing questions of why our popular view of this period is the way it is. He isn't afraid to take chunks out of Churchill; why not the Gammonati and readers of the Daily Mail?
The blurb talks about the myth of the "Good War" being used to justify more recent conflicts that have had such dismal results, but this is another point that doesn't actually get any serious discussion, which is a shame. Curiously, I take a different interpretation: that mass media and our collective squeamishness prevents military action on a scale taken to defeat Germany in 1945. This is no bad thing, but the successful resurrection of Germany and Europe - rapidly in the West, eventually in the East - surely arises at least in part from such total defeat, forced to start again from a tabula rasa. For example, the West encouraged uprisings in Iraq in 1991, but chose not to give them enough support to ensure overthrow of the regime - until the US returned to the subject a decade later and a world apart. And then, suffering a crisis of confidence, it proffered the same half-hearted support in the Arab Spring of 2011 and onward. The level of military involvement, its purpose and objectives, is a fair question for discussion, but the disproportionate popular expectation for outcomes is a constant and problematic. Ultimately one is left obliquely to infer that Hitchens' objections are largely faith-based - a position he is entitled to take, but would be better if he made it clear.
Clearly, this book was a thought-provoking read, and therefore a good thing, but it's a bit like the reveal in Murder on the Orient Express: like Poirot, Hitchens discusses the things he feels are important, but there is a sense that the simpler, more comforting, yet false explanation will prevail.